Burkina Faso has begun mass enrollment in a national register that will assign every person a unique 12-digit identification number, backed by face, fingerprint and iris biometrics. President Ibrahim Traoré launched the operation in Ouagadougou on Wednesday and was the first person enrolled, receiving his unique identifier card at the end of the procedure. The ceremony took place at the Palais des congrès de Ouaga 2000.
The government plans to deploy 966 enrollment kits progressively across the country for the Registre national d’identification unique, or RNIU. Each person’s number will be issued once and kept for life. The government says the register will make it easier to identify people reliably and to give them access to public services.
The identifier does not replace the national identity card, known as the CNIB, or the passport. It is meant to serve as a common reference that different government agencies can use to recognize the same person.
Burkina Faso already issues a separate biometric identity card shared with Mali and Niger, its partners in the Alliance of Sahel States. It was the first of the three to roll out the card, which allows travel among them without a passport, and Niger launched its version in March. Niger’s card is valid for 10 years and mandatory for citizens aged 15 and over.
The three countries have left ECOWAS, whose immigration chiefs last week committed to accept the bloc’s own biometric ID card at all official border crossings from January 1.
Enrollment collects biographic data along with a facial image, all ten fingerprints and both irises, which the government says will prevent duplicate registrations. The data will be hosted in state data centers in Burkina Faso and administered by Burkinabè engineers.
Registration is free, a choice Digital Transition Minister Aminata Zerbo said was made so that cost would not be a barrier. Mobile teams will travel to enroll internally displaced people, older people and people with disabilities.
Zerbo presented the register as a matter of digital sovereignty as well as administration, saying the country needs a reliable identification system that is controlled and run by its own experts in order to understand its population and plan its development.
Sources: AIB
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
